JYOTI MALHOTRA
New Delhi, August 21, 2007 : The newly combined Left-Right opposition in parliament continued to sink their teeth into India’s ambassador to the US Ronen Sen over his reported remarks on the nuclear deal, aware that it was acutely embarrassing the government by doing so.
Sen’s remarks in an interview with rediff.com that spoke of journalists ``running around like headless chickens looking for a comment here or comment there’’, in their reporting on the Indo-US nuclear deal, was mistaken by parliamentarians as a reference to themselves.
Even the unusually abject tone of Sen’s apology did not mollify the parliamentarians. Just like the interview, the mea culpa sought an honourable exit. But it was not to be.
``My comment about ``running around like headless chicken looking for a comment here or comment there’’ was a tactless observation on some of my media friends, and most certainly not with reference to any Hon’ble member of parliament. It was certainly not my intention to cast aspersion on any individual or organization.
``However, if I have unwittingly hurt any sentiments, I offer my unqualified apologies,’’ Sen said in a statement that was read out by Foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee in the Lok Sabha.
One of India’s ablest diplomats, Sen has handled some of the most sensitive, national assignments in his nearly 40-year-long career. He has been ambassador in Russia, Germany and London. He has served in the atomic energy department. As joint secretary in Rajiv Gandhi’s PMO, he was amongst the young prime minister’s closest aides.
Ironically, it was Atal Behari Vajpayee’s government which, in April 2004, appointed him ambassador to the US. Today, BJP leader Sushma Swaraj demanded that Sen be summoned to the parliamentary bar and made to apologise.
When the NDA lost power to the UPA in the elections that followed a month later in May 2004, Sen’s political appointment was approved by the new government.
Usually taciturn about his work and always reluctant to speak about the many roles he has played behind the scenes, Sen’s Sunday morning conversation with Aziz Haniffa, the rediff.com reporter in question, has opened him to a variety of unparliamentary charges today.
Clearly, he has been a major mover behind the nuclear deal, travelling to Delhi every other month to talk to both Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh, on how to pull off India’s most daring gamble in the face of the toughest American opposition.
Sen insisted in his apology that he had an off-the-record conversation with Haniffa, giving him his assessment on the nuclear deal. He said a number of his comments were ``either misunderstood or misquoted or quoted out of context.’’ For example, Sen said, he never said that the Hyde Act could not be renegotiated, but was only referring to the bilateral 123 agreement.
Haniffa, on the rediff.com website, said he stood by his story.
ENDS
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